first grade writing.

I love 1st grade writing. And phonetic spelling. It makes me smile.  

(Yes, I believe in teaching spelling and we do have certain "rules" about words that need to be spelled correctly. But for the most part, I try and try and try to just get these kiddos to WRITE! We stretch words, break words, listen to the sounds we hear and try our best. In my experience, as they become better readers, they become better spellers. I want them to get their ideas down and not get hung up on conventions and worrying about whether or not things are spelled correctly.) 

Most people would look at something like this and not see anything that makes any sense at all. And it's true. It really just looks like a bunch of random letters. But a first grade teacher can see more... 

We started with a directed drawing of a little leprechaun, sitting under a mushroom. I gave them some time to color and add in some details to their drawings and then gave them time to write. (We worked on these for a couple days.) Here's what one of my little guys came up with... 

"One sunny hot day, Luke (Loock) the leprechaun was under his mushroom. In the spring, Luke was protecting his gold all night long."

"Luke lived in a field. In the field there were tigers. The tigers collected gold. The tigers eat leprechauns to get the gold!"

"Before the tigers could eat Luke, Luke ran away. The tigers could not catch Luke. Luke found another mushroom. He was safe."

"All night long, Luke was safe until a rattlesnake slithered close to Luke. Luke takes his pot of gold and smashed the pot of gold on the rattlesnake's head."

"Luke was safe again. Then a tortoise (tortust) snapped his jaw at Luke. Luke put a cup of hot lava soup on the tortoise's head."

"No more animals came to try to eat Luke. Luke was safe forever. He slept all night long. He stayed in New York under his mushroom."

If you can look past the handwriting... figure out the almost complete lack of finger spaces... read the phonetic spelling... this is an amazing little story! I loved it and he was so, so proud of it!

We'll keep working on punctuation, finger spaces and capital letters. Obviously... we've got a little bit of work to do there. =)